


Collections

by oOAchilliaOo



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 16:56:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10881042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oOAchilliaOo/pseuds/oOAchilliaOo
Summary: Kaidan and Shepard take a shopping trip on the Citadel. It was supposed to be purely business but Kaidan can’t resist buying a little something to add to his collection. The downside of is that Shepard now knows what it is he collects…oops?





	Collections

It happened down in the commons. A dangerous and stupid thing, at least as far as Shepard’s heart went. She’d been busy perusing the stability dampeners in Cipritine Armoury. The Valkyrie was a great gun, one of the best she’d ever had the pleasure to work with, and what it did to the heads of Cerberus troopers was just about the only highlight of being attacked by them.

But it had a hell of a kick.

And it was messing with her aim just that little bit. Which was in turn was slightly decreasing the number of times she got to experience a trooper’s head being split open like a melon.

And, all things considered, that was pretty damn demoralising.

She’d hoped a stability dampener would help. However, she was all too aware that she would need to make sure that the upgrade didn’t compromise the power, lest her bullets suddenly lack the force needed to split a trooper’s head open like a melon.

That’s why she had brought Kaidan.

Well, that and the fact that one of his nightly reports had mentioned an omni-tool upgrade that would help co-ordinate the technical attacks of the Normandy crew members. She hadn’t really understood the background research, technical specs or science he’d put behind it all, but she had distilled enough to deduce that the upgrade equalled shields disappearing faster equalled guys dying quicker.

(And hopefully more troopers’ heads splitting open like melons.)

They’d found her a suitable dampener fairly quickly. She’d been in the middle of negotiating the price on a bulk order to be delivered to the Normandy next time they docked, when Kaidan had left, pausing only to mutter that he’d be back in a moment. She had nodded distractedly, assuming he’d spotted something to do with his omni-tool upgrade and had gone to discuss the details. But when she looked up, she couldn’t see him at Aegohr Munitions or at Elkoss Combine.

When she eventually caught sight of him, he was crossing the commons back towards her.

“All done?” he asked as he approached, a grin virtually splitting his face in two as he rocked up onto the balls of his feet and almost bounced back again. 

“Yes,” she said slowly, a little suspicious.

Kaidan Alenko, the duty focused marine who was, in every way, a paragon of control and restraint; who held his integrity so dear to his heart that he’d willingly, and with only minimal regret, sacrifice everything he’d ever wanted for its sake, was, at present, almost humming with excitement. As if, in all ways but one, he was a small boy on Christmas Eve.

Call her paranoid, but there was something a little odd about that. 

“Good,” he said, still seeming to hum even though he wasn’t actually moving. “In that case, I’m told Elkoss has a good line in ‘tool upgrades?”

Her eyes narrowed. Now that was even more suspicious. If he hadn’t been scouting out the potential upgrades, what had he been doing? Then she spotted the corner of a brightly coloured something that he was evidently trying hide behind his back.

The rising panic that she could see in his eyes as she fixed them with her own suspicious ones was so like the rising panic she’d seen so frequently on the SR1, that she couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to make it just that little bit worse.

However, he was faster these days. Just as she stepped forward, her hand outstretched and said, ‘what’s that?’ he had stepped quickly aside, placing the object even further behind his back and answered almost immediately with ‘nothing!’

They stared at each other, the panic still present in his beautiful whiskey coloured eyes now overlaid with a pleading expression as he silently begged her not to push any further. As if she was actually going to listen. Judging by the way his expression morphed into a frankly terrified one, he knew it. 

She shrugged, and carefully removed all traces of mischief from her demeanour before smiling brightly at him and suggesting they head to Elkoss. The sudden change of mood evidently had the intended effect because when she yelled ‘OH SHIT, LOOK!’ he was just off-balanced enough to turn around for a spilt second.

And a split second was all she needed.

She darted forwards as he turned, plucking the item from his now unresisting fingers and dashing forwards with it.

“Hey!” he snapped, immediately whirling around and attempting to snatch it away from her. “Give it back!”

She ducked under his arms as he made a grab for it and managed to put enough distance between them to read the cover of what turned out to be a… comic book?

“Tales of Suspense #52,” she read out loud. In her peripheral vision, she saw Kaidan deflate. 

“Okay.” He moved in front of her, looking virtually everywhere but her eyes. “Okay, I’m going to say this once, and then I’d really appreciate it if we could never speak of it again.”

Shepard fought down a smirk as she waited for him to continue. She nodded once in acknowledgment of his request, but purposefully made no actual verbal promise to abide by it.

“I… collect… comic books,” he said hesitantly. “Always have, and I know, I know we’re on duty and the galaxy’s in peril, but you’re holding a comic book that is over two hundred years old. It’s a really rare 1964 issue, containing the first appearance of Black Widow and uhh… yeah. Anyway.” He coughed, that adorable flush creeping up from under his collar in a way she hadn’t seen since the SR1. (God, she missed it.) “I collect comic books.”

She waited a long moment, long enough for him to get worried enough about her response that he managed to meet her eyes once more.

“So, this Black Widow?” This time she was unable to stop the smirk from pulling at her lip. “That would be this improbably curvy woman in purple?” She asked the question with all the innocence she could muster. It was totally worth it. The flush crept up all the way into his cheeks but sadly, only for the barest of seconds before he managed to control it.

“I… guess.” He reached up to rub the back of his neck awkwardly. “Can I have it back now?”

“Hell no!” She swept off towards the nearby bench and sat down. “I wanna read this.”

She started to peel away the protective plastic that covered the precious paper.

“Don’t!” Kaidan yelped, sounding so panicked that a few passers-by actually stopped for a moment. “Jesus, Shepard!” He carefully took the book from her and resealed the casing as if it were made of glass. “You don’t take it out of the plastic.”

“Then how do you read it? Or do you just look at the stacks and stacks of them in your cupboard and go ‘ooh pretty’?” She was genuinely curious, but mostly just amused by the intensely worried expression on his face. It was almost almost equivalent to the expression he habitually wore while patching up her bullet wounds in the field. Almost, but not quite.

“How did you…?” He broke off from his very important task of sealing the comic book away for a moment before immediately returning to it and muttering something unintelligible to its cover.

“I’m sorry?” she prompted.

He sighed wearily. “I bought the digital copy too, Okay? You can read that if you like. But for now can we please please get back to what we’re supposed to be doing?”

She decided that she had tormented him enough for one afternoon, and happily followed his lead to Elkoss Combine. She even listened to what he was saying about the optimisation of different omni-tool upgrades. She asked questions to make sure she’d at least understood the salient points, and in all ways, in all things, appeared to have completely forgotten about the whole ‘comic book’ thing.

At least until they got back to the Normandy.

“Kaidan collects comic books,” she blurted out literally as soon as they’d exited the airlock, finding herself practically incapable of holding it in any longer. Unfortunately for her it seemed that Joker was the only one in earshot to hear her pronouncement.

“So?” Joker said as he spun around in his chair.

“So?” Shepard asked incredulously. “So… mock him!” She gestured at Kaidan, who was holding the book protectively against his chest, just in case Joker was unclear on what exactly required mockery.

Instead, and to her eternal disappointment, Joker merely tilted his head in order to read the cover.

Instead of giving Kaidan the mockery he so richly deserved and that she’d come to expect and somehow cherish from her pilot, he had, with all the excitement Kaidan had displayed earlier, replied, “No way! Is that… TOS #52?” 

“Yeah.” He sounded so proud.

“Okay, man. I will give you…” Joker checked his omni-tool, tilting his head this way and that as he clearly weighed up options against each other. “My Ms Marvel #16 and my mint condition TOS #99 in exchange.”

“Because for some reason you think I don’t already have Ms Marvel #16?” Kaidan replied dryly.

“Aw, c’mon man, TOS #99 technically counts as two… You’re getting a really good deal!”

“No.”

“Wait. Wait,” Shepard interjected, slightly confused as to why Kaidan still wasn’t being mocked. “You collect these things too?”

She soon regretted asking that question. It led to her being treated to an hour long lecture about how they weren’t things, but the basis of a subculture that had pervaded novels and holomovies and games for over two hundred and fifty years, how they were a recognised art form that had inspired generations of artists and how…

Well, to be honest, she’d stopped listening after a while. Nerds.

“Okay, I give up,” she interrupted, cutting across whatever it was they were saying. “You win. Enjoy your brightly coloured children’s books.”

Without waiting for a response, she left, the sound of their indignation ringing in her ears as she fought down a smirk.

That night, as she was putting the finishing touches on a report to the Council, her terminal pinged one more time. Sighing heavily, she immediately told herself that she wasn’t that tired and could attend to whatever it was that had gone wrong this time.

She opened her messages.

The new message had the subject line ‘peace offering?’ and simply read:

Hey Shepard,  
I don’t know if you were serious earlier or not, but if you were, here’s the digital copy of the comic.  
Enjoy,  
Kaidan.

Grinning, for a reason she couldn’t and wouldn’t explore, because if she’d told herself once she’d told herself a hundred times that she was not going to push him, she transferred the file to the nearest datapad and crawled into bed to see what all the fuss was about.

After three pages she had to admit, there might be something to this comic book thing.


End file.
